Miranda
She was very glad that Rachel knew, and that she could completely relax around her old friend. There were no secrets between them. Rachel even knew about her father. And everything about Winnie.
It was a genuine joy to bring Dawn to her friend’s pool, put floaties on her arms, and hold her while she splashed around on hot summer days. She and Rachel talked about preschools, and picky eating, and dropping the nap.
“And are you ready to be set up yet?” her friend asked.
“I’m sure Grandma Joan would be happy to babysit while you go on a few dates.”
“Honestly, it’s the last thing on my mind.”
“Do you miss Tom?”
She swallowed and nodded. She wished it wasn’t true.
“Well, you know what they say! The best way to get over someone is to get under someone new.”
Miranda rolled her eyes, and Rachel stood down.
Men really were the last thing on her mind.
Dawn took so much of her time and energy—and happily so.
She was an effusive and rambunctious toddler who spoke a chatty mixture of English and French and was so stunning already with her lovely bronze-colored hair, which was a delicious contrast to her pale eyes.
All anyone could say when they saw her was “What a beauty.”
So that Miranda could get back to work with Emilio, Joan took over the role that Vivienne had played, of elder caregiver, and Miranda was amazed at how well her mother took to it.
She often came home for lunch or dinner to find grandmother and granddaughter covered in flour, mid-cake, or shouting in good-natured competition over a hundredth game of Candy Land, or even napping on the couch after a long nature walk where they’d collected specimens from a list that Joan had created to teach Dawn about her home: snips of cypress, fallen oak leaves, wild blackberries, bark from a redwood and a eucalyptus.
“Oh yeah,” said Rachel, when Miranda expressed surprise over her mother’s easy way with Dawn. “My mom’s much better with the grandkids than she ever was with us. There’s less at stake, I guess. She can just…play.”
Whatever the reason, Miranda was grateful that Dawn was in such good hands with Grandma Joan.
Miranda treasured the time she spent with Dawn in the early morning before she went to work, then in the evenings and on the weekends.
To ensure they got some alone time, just mother and daughter, she often took her on little adventures to places like Lassen Volcanic National Park, where they walked among a burst of spring wildflowers while snowmelt accompanied them in melodious streams and Dawn made bouquets for her and for Joan; to Muir Woods down in Marin to feel their smallness among the enormous millennia-old redwoods; to Sacramento to see the state capital and walk around Old Town, buying dollar toys and penny candy, which they ate until their teeth stuck together.
She took pictures everywhere they went, and developed them herself in a studio she rented in Sonoma.
Miranda made a reservation at the Pine Inn in Carmel, which would be a bit of a splurge, but worth it to see the look on Dawn’s face when she saw the sumptuous front lobby and jumped on the impeccably made beds.
The day before she planned to take Dawn out of preschool to get a jump start on the weekend traffic, the phone in her office rang.
“Hello? Miranda Hartley speaking.”
“Hi, Miranda, it’s Winnie.”
Miranda froze. It’s possible she died for a second.
“I’m sure this is a huge surprise,” Winnie went on, caution obvious in her tone. “I was hoping I could talk to you in person.” She cleared her throat. “Would you be open to meeting somewhere?”
“Where are you?” Not in town so everyone can see you, I hope.
“I live in Fort Bragg, but I can meet closer to you.”
It has to be somewhere anonymous. Where we won’t run into anyone we know. “There’s a diner in Santa Rosa. Can you get there by two this afternoon?” It was ten in the morning now.
“Yes.” Her answer was so quick, Miranda had a feeling Winnie would have said yes to meeting inside a house on fire. She gave her sister instructions on how to get to the diner, then rearranged her day of meetings to spend the afternoon off-vineyard.
At ten to two, Miranda was sitting in one of the cracked red leather booths, nursing a cup of coffee and picking at a slice of boysenberry pie.
At five to two, Winnie walked in, saw Miranda, and made a beeline for the booth.
Wearing a simple white T-shirt tucked into faded blue jeans, with her formerly glorious hair cut to shoulder length and layered without skill, Winifred Hartley might have been anyone. There was no trace of the fashionable hippie Miranda had last seen nearly four years ago.
Neither of them made any move to hug, and Winnie slid into the booth.
Winnie had rolled up the sleeves of her tee, and Miranda noted that her arms looked healthy and tan. Her sister looked okay. She hoped so much she was okay.
“Thanks for meeting me,” said Winnie.
“Of course,” said Miranda.
“And thanks for telling Bernard about you and Dawn. When I got back in touch with him, it was wonderful to hear how well you two are doing. Not that I had any doubt.”
“She’s absolutely the joy of my life,” Miranda said. Please don’t say you’ve changed your mind. Please.
A waitress came and took Winnie’s order of coffee and a slice of chocolate cake.
“Gosh, this is even harder than I thought it was going to be,” Winnie said when they were alone again.
She picked up a fork and pressed her right index finger methodically into each tine.
“So…I’m here because I’m sober now. For almost a year.
And one of the things I’m supposed to do to stay sober is to make amends to the people I hurt, and I know how much I hurt you.
I was the world’s most selfish sister. You were always, always there for me, and I was never there for you, and then I showed up one morning and asked for the biggest favor of all, to become the mother of my child. ”
“Please stop.” She couldn’t take this from her sister.
She much preferred not talking about the things that drove them apart.
Why couldn’t they just focus on now, and the future?
But then she realized how harsh she must have sounded, so she softened it by adding, “I don’t think of Dawn as a burden, you know. She’s not something to apologize for.”
Winnie didn’t reply.
“And you don’t have to apologize for the rest, either. I’m your older sister. I’ve always wanted to help you. What was hard was when you didn’t let me.”
“I’ve had to figure things out for myself.”
The cake and coffee arrived, and Winnie set down the fork to wrap her hands around the cup of steaming liquid.
“I also broke promises to you,” Winnie went on. “I said I wouldn’t go back to Lincoln, or stay with him if things went south again, and I did. I said I’d be careful, and I wasn’t.”
“Are you back with Lincoln now?”
“God, no. He made it abundantly clear that he was done with me, and I’m…done with him, too.”
Though she felt some sadness for her sister, now that she understood how much it hurt to let go of a man she truly loved, Miranda was also relieved.
So Winnie wasn’t back to say that she and Lincoln wanted to be Dawn’s parents.
That had been her worst nightmare these past years.
Dawn was still young enough to make that switch.
She wouldn’t remember these years when Miranda was her “mother.”
“And I didn’t leave Dawn with you with the intention of drinking and drugging myself into oblivion, either, although that’s exactly what happened. The substances became a way to anesthetize the pain I felt from everything else that had happened. All I wanted was to start over.”
“Things happen to people, Winnie, and we deal with them. You could have come home, you know. I could have helped.” I always tried to help.
“I know you would have, and perversely, that felt like another reason I couldn’t come home.
I couldn’t keep leaning on you. I needed to be…
myself, on my own. I’m so, so sorry for lying and for disappearing, and for abandoning all my responsibilities.
I’ll regret those things for the rest of my life. ”
“Thank you for your apology,” Miranda finally said.
“Thank you for accepting it,” Winnie said.
They both sat there for a moment, drinking their coffees.
“You don’t have to answer this right now,” Winnie said, “but I’d like to see her, if you’d allow it. Strictly as her aunt. You are her mother, and I’ll never renege on that. I don’t break promises anymore.”
It felt like such a risk. Her sister seemed sincere, but she could mean every single word right now, as Miranda believed she had in the past—as their father had when he promised them those silly books had made him well—and still, Winnie could get involved with another guy like Lincoln. She could drink or do drugs again.
Worse, Dawn might love Winnie more than she loved Miranda. She might know, in some bone-deep way, that this woman was her true mother.
Miranda swallowed all that fear. This was her sister, who really did seem to have learned some valuable lessons.
She took a deep breath and said, “Okay. We can try.”
Winnie’s whole face lit up. “Thank you, Miranda. Thank you. We’ll do it however you want to do it.”
“Let me think about it,” Miranda said.
“Of course.” Winnie picked up her fork and took a huge bite of chocolate cake. A tiny smear of frosting smudged her lower lip, and the pure joy her sister took in this celebratory moment reminded her of the kid she used to be.
Her heart clenched.
She really hoped Winnie could handle this.
She hoped she could handle it herself.